US: Cancer registries stop counting trans people

• Registries funded by the CDC and NCI must now classify patients only as “male,” “female,” or “unknown.”
• The measure responds to the presidential directive of January 2025 that eliminates the recognition of identities beyond biological sex in federal agencies.
• Experts warn that hiding this data does not solve inequalities, but rather prevents the creation of specific prevention policies for the group.

In a move that experts describe as a historic setback for public health, US cancer registries have stopped collecting specific information about patients’ gender identity. Starting this year, national databases will only recognize the categories “male” and “female.” This measure, promoted by the administration of donald trump, threatens to make health disparities invisible and halt decades of research into how cancer affects trans people in the US.

As reported by The National LGBTQIA+ Cancer Network, the year 2025 has recorded the largest dismantling of data on the trans community in the history of the country. “Actively refusing to control the impact of cancer on our community is simply poor public health practice”says Scout. Records are vital to detect survival trends and risk factors; Without them, the health system is walking blind when it comes to trans people in the US.

Historically, the LGBTQ+ community had been excluded from these statistics due to a lack of gender and sexual orientation options. In recent years, the spectrum had been expanded to include categories such as “transgender” or “other.” However, the new federal policy reverses these advances. By categorizing a trans woman as a “man” or a trans man as a “woman” based only on the sex assigned at birth, critical variables about hormonal treatments and risks specific to each transition are lost.

The danger of institutional invisibility

Cancer registries are not just numbers; They are the basis for policy makers to design early detection programs, as was done in the past with breast cancer in black or young women. By erasing trans people in the US from the equation, the true prevalence of the disease in the group is prevented from being known, condemning thousands of patients to a medicine that refuses to recognize their existence.